Logging and Forest Products

The 19th-century logging industry reshaped the landscape of central and northern Wisconsin, provided a livelihood for thousands of workers, and formed the roots of today's thriving paper industry. By the late nineteenth century, Wisconsin was one of the premier lumber producing states in the U.S., and from 1890 to 1910 forest products led Wisconsin's developing industrial economy.

Despite its obvious potential, logging was only a minor activity for the first white settlers, who actually brought lumber with them from the East at great expense. Throughout most of the 1830s, logging was carried out on a small scale around Prairie du... more...

Original Documents and Other Primary Sources

The development of the lumber industry in Western Wisconsin

More than 100 articles on logging and the lumber industry

Recollections of logging the Chippewa Valley, 1844-1916.

An 1886 visit to the Menominee community of Keshena

A Made-to-Order Farm to lure settlers northward, 1921

Recollections of Old Superior

Lumberjack tales of Paul Bunyan

Peshtigo's priest recalls surviving the fire

Community-building in the northern forest in the 1880s.

A lumberjack recalls an 1898 forest fire

A rafting trip down the Wisconsin River in 1868

Rafting lumber down the Wisconsin River in 1849

Peshtigo residents look back, 50 years after the Great Fire

A lumberjack describes living conditions in lumber camps in the 1850s

A mid-1800s birchbark maple sugar container

The wild animals of Paul Bunyan's Northwoods

Wisconsin's earliest forest conservation plea, 1867

Proceedings of the Forest History Association of Wisconsin (1996-2006)

A guide to the Great Lakes lumber industry, 1886

Proceedings of the Forest History Association of Wisconsin (1986-1995)

The marvelous exploits of Paul Bunyan

Report on the Menominee at Termination, 1958

An 1875 history of the Chippewa Valley

Memoirs of an Interpreter among the Ojibwe, 1840-1900

Folklore and folktales collected by Charles E. Brown

A Guide to CCC Camps in Wisconsin, 1937

Descriptions of Wisconsin disasters and catastrophes, 1848-1948

Proceedings of the Forest History Association of Wisconsin (1976-1985)